Much ado about shrapnel

A Colorado college student says he was short-changed by the city of Fort Collins when it refused to accept his bucket of change. Ted Nischan tried to use his nearly 50 pound (almost 23 kg) bucket of loose change to pay a US$160 speeding ticket. Strapped for cash and two days from losing his license, he first tried to pay by credit card, but the municipal court didn't have a working credit card machine. So he went back home, grabbed his savings, and went back in and tried to pay it. They would not accept it. The court told him it would be a waste of taxpayer money to count it all, even though his bank already confirmed it was the right amount. That may be true, but it is the city's job to accept the fine. Nischan was paying the fine in legal tender, which, according to Wikipedia, is a medium of payment allowed by law or recognized by a legal system to be valid for meeting a financial obligation. For instance, if an individual owes someone US$100 in the United States, he or she can try to pay the debt in Mexican pesos or valuable jewelry or gold metal, or even a cheque or a charge card, but the creditor is not required to accept any of those as payment. The creditor must accept US $20 dollar bills, however, because that is legal tender in the United States. In Mexico, however, pesos are legal tender, but US dollars are not. So, by Mexican law, the creditor must accept pesos as payment, whereas the creditor can refuse US dollars or gold. But, because the city of Fort Collins were having none of it, the poor kid was forced to dip into his college financial aid.